Before half term, inspired by the colours of autumn, the children investigated ‘land art’ during their Forest School lessons. In particular, by an artist named Andy Goldsworthy. Andy is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist, who uses elements of nature to create pieces of art, known as ‘land art’.
The children were very impressed by the simplicity of his art, made using anything and everything found outside; sticks, stones, ice, leaves etc.
Reception formed small groups to create their land art and produced a huge variety of different pieces. Some pieces represented people and faces, others fire and a sunburst! One of the most eye-catching, and probably the simplest, was a collection of pure yellow sycamore leaves positioned on dark earth around the base of a large tree trunk. Their second lesson of the week focused on games previously played, as well as exploring.
An exciting discovery was made, in the form of an old fence post. The children identified this as the Gruffalo’s pencil! They made up a wonderful story about how he must have been writing a letter in the woods, when he was suddenly disturbed! By whom, or what? They did look for the paper he was writing on, but decided that he must have taken that with him! The children then spent a long time walking round, carrying the ‘pencil’ deciding where the best place to leave it for the Gruffalo to find. What wonderful creativity from a piece of wood.
Kindy and Nursery enjoyed making faces; arranging nature on the top of the round logs surrounding the fire circle. The group talked about the features on their faces and what sort of things could be used to represent them. They made some very funky hairstyles from of leaves and pine needles!
Mrs Wilson challenged Year 2 to create a piece of permanent land art for our Forest School area, something they could continue to add to all year. Everyone joined in, making a huge natural weaving frame between two trees and then finding the different colours of nature to weave into it. The end result was a very autumnal looking sculpture!
Year 1 were lucky enough to be at the beach on Thursday before half term and were able to combine their topic work with land art, creating The Titanic from pebbles, driftwood, shells and seaweed.
I hope you have all enjoyed half term and been able to explore outside with your children. Mrs Wilson
